


they call it understanding, they call it vulnerability

by moonbeatblues



Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [4]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, GET IT, as always, in which i love beau, mech au but also mechs are a vehicle
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:08:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24018757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonbeatblues/pseuds/moonbeatblues
Summary: “You should learn how to fix up 008.”Beau stretches, languid and with a groan. It’s too small a bed for it, her legs nudge against Jester’s and Jester can see her fingers curl on the slats of the headboard. “Yeah, it’s kinda stupid, huh?”Jester frowns. “No, you didn’t make it. It’s complicated.”“They all are, though. And I can’t keep expecting the Soul to fix it up for me. Gotta be self-dependent.”“No,” she says again, a little rushed. “No, you don’t.”(jester and dairon have a chat)
Relationships: Dairon & Beauregard Lionett, Jester Lavorre & Dairon, Jester Lavorre/Beauregard Lionett
Series: harder to speak when you're holding the machine [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1672555
Comments: 3
Kudos: 45





	they call it understanding, they call it vulnerability

**Author's Note:**

> listen. jester and dairon are the two people in the world beau trusts the most and i want them to talk so bad
> 
> (title from yr heart by hand habits)

One of the front legs of the thing absolutely  _ smashes _ into the 008’s cockpit, and all at once it’s not funny anymore. She raises a shaky hand to her ear and immediately can hear the rattle of Beau breathing, heavy. Surprised.

“Beau. she knows. Get out of there.”

She hears Beau spit. It’s probably blood. “It’s okay.”

“Beau—“

“I know who it is.”

The other mech, it just— it catches 008’s fist, holds it fast and then wrenches the arm to the side.

Jester’s a few seconds from calling for The Traveler— the brief consideration that interference will definitely get them kicked out, maybe arrested, is overturned, but long enough for her to catch the feedback still coming through. The wheezy, gasping sound of Beau laughing.

—

“Why’d you do that?”

She takes momentary satisfaction in how Dairon looks— like she’d actually taken the hit, when Beau slammed her into the wall. They wince when they jerk their head over to look at her.

“Hello to you, too, Miss Lavorre. How’s your tall friend?”

She scowls. “Why’d you fight her?”

“I was not expecting to see her in the ring. I came to make some money, not a scene.”

“Yeah, well, you got both. And we didn’t really have any to spare.”

“I’ll get the 008 fixed up. I was there when it was made.”

“I don’t care about the 008.” It’s not really true— she cares because it’s  _ Beau’s _ , because if it’s in the shop that means Beau sits out the mission, means she’s in the kind of danger they can’t stamp out. “I care about Beau. I’m the one who fixes her up, not you.”

Dairon laughs. “I do not think she would let me do that for her. You should take it as an honor. I’ve never seen her look that way at anyone.”

Her heart stutters a little, and then she remembers she’s angry. “I— I do. It’s not her fault no one gives her the chance not to fight.”

“Yes, I agree. She could have been an Expositor two years ago. The Zadash branch is in dangerous need of an overhaul. They don’t know how to look for talent— they think it’ll come to them in the exact form they need. They’ve lost the Mistress’s approval.”

“I meant you, too.” She crosses her arms, and then, finding the gesture inadequate, her legs. “She got really hurt. You went for her cockpit. She doesn’t expect anyone to do that.”

“Miss Lavorre—“

“It’s Jester,” she snaps. “How’d you even learn my last name, anyway?”

“Believe it or not, Beauregard talks to me, as well.” Her tone softens when Jester’s scowl twists into something a little less angry and a little more hurt. “Jester. it’s not safe that Beauregard fights the way she does. It’s not actually self-preservation to put yourself in danger on an assumption of safety.”

“I know,” she says. “You think I don’t know that?”

“She trusts me to show her when she needs to change. I was showing her.”

“She’s not stupid. You don’t need to half-kill her to tell her she needs to guard better.”

“No,” Dairon says. “She’s not stupid. But she doesn’t trust easily.”

“She trusts me.”

“Yes, she does.” They say it like it’s a problem. “I wonder when that happened.”

“She could trust you, too.”

“She does, Jester. It’s just not that simple.” Dairon looks away, and Jester siphons a little more satisfaction from the note of— regret, she thinks— that creeps into their voice. “Vulnerability’s a funny thing. You see it when she speaks to you. I see it when she fights me and loses.”

“It‘s not the same. Not if she doesn’t mean for you to see it.”

“She does. Part of having a teacher is expecting to be corrected. She knows I’ll beat her, when we fight.”

“She didn’t this time,” Jester grouses, and then thinks about Beau laughing when she’d found out. Her crawling from the dented cockpit with eyes bright, hugging Dairon so tight in the alley she’d actually lifted her off the ground.

Dairon looks at her like they know she’s figured it out. ”You’ve tried to talk to her about this before.”

She says nothing.

“She’ll listen to you about a lot, I can see it. But not about this.” Dairon almost reaches out, for her hand, and thinks better of it. “She won’t listen to me about it either.”

“So what, then?”

Dairon shrugs. “I have to show her she needs to do something else. And I can trust that she’ll be okay afterward, because of you.”

“Oh.”

“She’s never had someone who wanted to help her feel better before, not like you.”

“I know,” Jester whispers. It should be a compliment, but she thinks about Fjord and Veth calling Beau prickly after poking at her until she lashes out. She thinks about Beau telling her in the dark that she’d gotten a letter from home, that she had a little brother. She’d shook, and shoved her knuckles against her mouth to keep from crying too loud, and said she hoped they’d treat him better. It should be a compliment that she’s the first person Beau has ever trusted to help her, but it isn’t.

Dairon looks at her kindly, like it’s all passed, but she glances over to see Beau talking to Caleb, sees her rub crusted blood from under her nose absentmindedly. She uncrosses her arms to pick at a loose thread on her suit, but keeps her legs crossed. A matter of principle. “We were supposed to be resting.”

“I’m sorry,” Dairon says, looking over as well. She sounds like she means it. “It could’ve waited. I was excited to see her. I didn’t know she would be here.”

“Funny way of showing it.”

“Maybe so.”

“She’ll be okay. I’ll make sure. But you need to fix up 008.”

“I will. Where are you staying?”

Jester grits her teeth, thinks about Zadash and the days Beau left to train and came back late, tired, and hurting, but Dairon has their money and they’ve got their eyebrows scrunched like they’re actually thinking over what Jester said. She tells her the place.

—

“You should learn how to fix up 008.”

Beau stretches, languid and with a groan. It’s too small a bed for it, her legs nudge against Jester’s and Jester can see her fingers curl on the slats of the headboard. “Yeah, it’s kinda stupid, huh?”

Jester frowns. “No, you didn’t make it. It’s complicated.”

“They all are, though. And I can’t keep expecting the Soul to fix it up for me. Gotta be self-dependent.”

“No,” she says again, a little rushed. “No, you don’t.”

“I should be, though.” She can hear the faint frown, the self-admonishing tinge. A hint of something she knows will burrow deep and treacherous if Jester doesn’t pull it up by the roots now. “Not always gonna have someone around to help.”

“You’ll have me,” she says, and reaches for her. She closes a hand on the curve of Beau’s hip and Beau jumps.

“You don’t have to. I can’t ask that.”

“I want to.”

“Yeah, but—“

“I don’t do stuff I don’t want to do,” she breathes. “You know that.”

Beau sinks down a little, becomes a little more loose, a little more pliable. A little easier to pull against herself, to her front. “Yeah.”

“I wanna help you. Always.”

Beau’s quiet for a long moment. These kind of conversations end up a lot more dispersed, usually, someone falls asleep or goes out on watch or just ducks out, feeling a little too raw a little too soon.

“Why?”

Her chest expands and shrinks against Jester’s arm, against her front. In the dark, Jester can see the curve of her face, sees her eyelashes dust her cheek when she blinks. Her mouth is open, just a little. Like she wants to keep talking, but doesn’t know what to say.

Jester does, though. It’s easy. “I love you.”

Beau’s chest freezes, caught on an inhale. She stops blinking.

“Oh.”

Jester’s head is above hers— she tips a little to press her own mouth, also open, to Beau’s temple. Shorter hairs, the ones that always escape Beau’s topknot, press against her nose. She closes her eyes.

She’s only loved a few people before. Momma, The Traveler— does he count? Fjord and Yasha and Caleb and Caduceus and Veth, of course, of course, and Molly, and Kiri, too, wherever she is. She doesn’t really know how to say it’s different, it just is. Not  _ more _ or  _ better _ , just different.

“I, uh, I love you, too,” Beau says, quiet like she turned her face into the pillow just so, like she’s nervous. The breath pushes out of her lungs again and she sinks against Jester like all the fight’s gone out of her.

She doesn’t worry if Beau means it. Just that it probably sounds a little heavy on her tongue because she’s not used to saying it. Because she’s not used to feeling like she can say it. Like she can feel it and still be safe.

She thinks about kissing Beau again, and then she remembers something about Beau saying she thought the first time was a dream. If she did now, she thinks, she could tell Beau a million times it wasn’t a dream, that she meant it, but it would still be late and Beau would still be a little woozy from healing, and she’d still wake up afraid.  _ Because the thing she can do for Beau _ , she thinks,  _ that other people can’t, isn’t telling her things. It’s listening. _

Beau’s almost asleep. Jester’s mouth is still pressed to the crown of her head, and she leaves it there and thinks that there’s nothing to prove. That there’s tomorrow morning, and the one after that, and all the way down.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm @seafleece on tumblr!! come say hello


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